Naming-and-Shaming + Conscience Money + Retribution

Hi Red Onion,
You're right. Nobody is named or shamed until after legal proceedings or settlements have been completed. However, the potential is there for anybody disputing anything with Revenue and most people are pretty private and fear what might appear in newspapers in the future.
First thing's first - you need to distinguish what gets published (or in your parlance, who gets named and shamed). This is set out here (https://www.revenue.ie/en/corporate...revenue-publishes-list-of-tax-defaulters.aspx):
Part 1 persons in whose case the Court has determined a penalty relating to a settlement, or has imposed a fine, imprisonment or other penalty in respect of a tax or duty offence.

Part 2 persons in whose case Revenue has accepted a settlement offer instead of initiating court proceedings, or a settlement has been paid in full. This list reflects the amount of a settlement that remained unpaid at the end of the period (31 December 2018). Unpaid amounts are subject to Revenue’s normal debt collection and enforcement procedures.

Part 1: Court Determinations
  • Court Determination of Penalty:Subject to certain criteria, in settlement cases wherea person does not agree liability to a penalty, or fails to pay an agreed penalty,the Court determines the penalty. Details arepublished when the Court determined penalty exceeds 15% of the total tax and the total of the tax, interest and penalty is more than €35,000 and a qualifying disclosure has not been made:
    • 6 such cases are published and €325,293.15 is the total amount of the Court determined penalties.
  • Court imposed fine, imprisonment or other penalty: Details are published when a fine or other Court penalty is imposed in respect of tax or duty offences. Court penalties may include imprisonment, partly suspended or suspended sentences, community service in lieu of imprisonment, and closure orders.
    • 178 such cases are published and €429,090 is the total of court fines imposed. These cases include:
      • 114 cases of failure to file a tax return, failure to deliver a statement of affairs or failure to remit VAT. Court fines of up to €20,000 were imposed
      • 34 cases of misuse of marked mineral oil, in respect of which Court fines of between €2,500 and €6,000 were imposed and other Court penalties included 240 hours community service
      • 29 cases of excise and licencing offences including smuggling of tobacco products, illegal selling of cigarettes, processing illicit tobacco products, failure to hold a current liquor licence, possession of untaxed alcohol for sale and possession of an unregistered vehicle. Court fines of up to €5,000 were imposed and other Court penalties included 6 months imprisonment, an 18 month custodial sentence fully suspended and a 2 day closure order
      • 1 case of obstruction of a Revenue officer in respect of which the court imposed a penalty of 120 hours community service in lieu of 4 months imprisonment.

My main thrust is that when you submit a completed tax form, you are almost standing naked in front of people whom you will never meet or even deal with. They know everything about you, your earnings and your occupation, your wife's earnings, your past occupations etc etc. You don't even know the name(s) of the Revenue people with whom you are dealing other than the "messenger" (probably wrong title). You know nothing about them, not even their names. You get the impression that you are dealing with the Gestapo.
Some of this is wrong and some of it I just don't understand. Your tax return is just that, it's the details of your income subject to tax, which the State needs to know in order to administer the taxation system. When you file a self-assessed tax return you aren't dealing with "Revenue people" anymore - it's a largely automated system, the tax assessment issues automatically based on the details you submit. Unless you are one of the vanishingly small number of people who don't use the online services to file your return, the software calculates your liability for you based on the income details you have put on the form and you complete a self assessment panel that says whether you agree with it or not, and if not you submit your own figure for your tax liability. At that stage there is no name of a Revenue officer to know.

Beyond that, if Revenue decide they want to examine your return or your tax affairs in any way, you absolutely will know the name and direct contact details for the person / area dealing with the matter. Interaction with Revenue can only happen in one of a limited number of ways -
a phone call (in which case the officer will identify themselves),
an unannounced visit to a business (where the officer will show their Revenue ID and authorisation),
by correspondence from the desk (in which case there will be contact details on the letter),
by way of a notified field audit (in which case there will be contact details on the audit letter, and when the officer arrives out to start the audit they will show their Revenue ID and authorisation).

If somehow you receive a contact from Revenue and don't know who the person dealing with you is, you only need to write in or telephone and ask, and they will tell you, because they have to. (The only exception to this would be a very small number of officers working with the Criminal Assets Bureau, where for obvious reasons officers' identities are not disclosed for their own protection, but I'm assuming you're not writing from the perspective of an organised crime chief!)

Information on Revenue's Customer Charter here (including complaints and review rights & procedures): https://www.revenue.ie/en/corporate.../customer-service/customer-charter/index.aspx

Information on Revenue's Code of Practice for its compliance activities here: https://www.revenue.ie/en/self-asse.../documents/code-of-practice-revenue-audit.pdf

The appeals process takes up to two years. That in itself suggests that Revenue have backed the wrong horse in lots of cases. Revenue can sit back, the tax payer must pay up front even though the amount is being disputed (or else suffer an 8% interest penalty per year over the two years wait if the appeal is lost). Then he must pay the Financial Advisor and solicitor.
If only the appeals process took a mere 2 years - the process can take significantly longer than that at present. But that is nothing to do with Revenue, as the appeal commissioners are an entirely separate statutory body. It in no way suggests anything one way or the other about the wrong horse being backed. This is borne out by the high percentage of tax appeals that are found in Revenue's favour, when they do eventually get heard and determined.

Nobody is required to go and get representation, the appeal commissioners aren't a court and are used to dealing with people representing themselves. Whether one will need representation will depend on the matter under dispute, whether it is a disagreement over a factual question or over a provision of law. If a fact-based argument it is self evident that it is the person themselves who is in possession of all the facts in relation to their own circumstances. In relation to a provision of law, a person is probably ill advised to have reached the point of an assessment and appeal on a point of law in the first place, without already having had professional advice along the way (in other words how do they know the inspector is wrong?!). More information on the appeals process is here: https://www.revenue.ie/en/corporate/information-about-revenue/appeals/index.aspx

Tax appeals are time- and resource-consuming and in my experience Revenue do not like to end up at appeal unless there is no other means of settling a matter. They certainly don't end up there for the craic. One of the key metrics that they concern themselves with is how long their audits / interventions have been open, and the one surefire way to increase the average age of the cases an officer or area has open, is to get bogged down in appeals.

I worked in the public service (several areas). I was obliged to wear a name tag while on duty. Even when I answered the phone, I had to volunteer my name to the caller even before the conversation started. I have no problem with this and understand the "why's and where's." I agree with the process. However, our Revenue assessors have total privacy and can go into work every day knowing that they cannot be identified to anybody.
Again, this is just plain wrong. All officers dealing with making enquiries into taxpayer's returns are exercising Revenue Powers and are required to identify themselves (again subject to very limited exceptions).

Also, I believe a person wrongfully assessed should be entitled to some retribution at least. But, there's no chance of this happening.
Define "wrongfully" though. I don't think you actually understand the circumstances that give rise to Revenue making an assessment in most instances. It is only after engagement (or an attempt from Revenue officers to engage) with the taxpayer. An assessment can only be raised where there is a basis, in both fact and law, for that assessment. Do you have any information to suggest otherwise is the case, either at individual officer level or in some organised way, because I'm pretty sure those charged with governance of Revenue, internally and externally, would be very concerned to know about such practices?

In conclusion:
Overall Leper, it appears you don't really know or understand what you're on about; how the tax system actually operates in the self assessment era (i.e. since the mid 1980's), the governance / checks & balances both external and internal, over how Revenue as an organisation (and its individual officers) operate, or the legal framework around tax assessments and appeals. I would suggest you should inform yourself before making further lofty pronouncements.
 
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